Du Quoin identifies significant water leak

Du Quoin Mayor Guy Alongi Tuesday afternoon shared information about a substantial water leak found in the city"s northeast corner. He explains:

"Late last week the water department identified a water leak in a field between Line Street and Hidden Lakes subdivision. As you know the city has been working hard to identify leaks and repair them in order to get the cities efficiency rate up so the city isn"t paying for water that isn"t billed to customers. This particular leak, the water department says, could have been leaking for several years because of its remote location. It is estimated that between 500,000 and a million gallon could have been lost each month. To put this into perspective, the city is billed on average of 23 million gallons a month from Rend Lake. This would equate to about 3.2% of the total Rend Lake water billed to the city of Du Quoin. In other words this was a substantial leak over a period of time described to me as someone having a garden hose turn on and flowing 24 hours a day seven days a week.

The water department is working hard to identify other leaks around town and will be correcting each and every one we find. We know of another leak at the entrance to the alley in back of Croessman Wholesale that will corrected in the coming days."